the back of a ceaseand-desist order he’s been drafting. There’s a street map on top of the phone books Eddie Mae keeps under her desk. Using the index, he tries to find Oakwood Glen. By the name, it’s no sur prise that it’s located on the west side of town, home to dozens of new housing developments and subdivisions, each one full of Oaks and Glens and Hills and Estates.
The front door opens, and Eddie Mae blows into the office, bringing a warm gust of August air behind her, thick and moist and laced with the burnt smell of engine exhaust from the park ing lot. Her wig is a caramel- colored number full of ringlets that don’t suit her face or age. And it’s crooked on one side. She’s wearing sunglasses and no makeup and blowing hot air about her current boyfriend and his long list of shortcomings, starting with a fight they had at six o’clock this morning, carried over from the night before. From what Jay can gather, it had some thing to do with a dominoes game and a missing six-pack of beer. Jay butts into her rant long enough to tell her he’s stepping out for a while and doesn’t know when he’ll be back. She waves him off, still running down her boyfriend, muttering on about his crusty feet and tuna fish breath.
Jay takes his time heading west, circling the streets around his office building until he feels certain he’s not being followed. Then he makes his way to Memorial Drive, watching the landscape change before his eyes with every westward mile. He drives past furriers and diamond retailers in the Galleria shop ping district and four-star restaurants off Post Oak Boulevard, into a plush residential community of newly constructed homes. One hundred years ago, this would have been logging territory. Developers have since tamed the area into a forest of subdivisions and planned communities. Memorial Drive is dotted with large, elaborately decorated signs, each enshrined in lush landscaping, announcing the entrance to one private housing community after another: Plantation Oaks and Pecan Grove Estates and Briar Meadows and Maplewood Glens.
According to the street map, he’s to turn right on Wilcrest, a few miles past Town & Country mall, then make another right on a street called Autumn Oaks Lane. Here he finds the entrance to Oakwood Estates. Oakwood Glen runs down the center of the subdivision, lined on both sides with town houses made up to look like stately French Tudors. The street is wide and freshly paved, and there are newly planted pin oak trees in each yard; they are tiny and childlike, like something borrowed from a toy train depot. There’s not a stitch of shade to be found in the whole subdivision. Jay squints against the sun, checking house numbers through his windshield.
The fourth town house on the right-hand side is 14475. From the car, Jay studies the front windows of Elise Linsey’s home, looking for some sign of activity. He has no idea if anyone is home or what exactly he’ll say when the door opens, when he sees her face again. He checks his side mirrors before getting out of the car. There are few vehicles on the street at this hour. Oakwood Estates is quiet and still. Jay climbs out of the Skylark.
At the front door, he rings the bell twice. But there’s no answer.
He waits a good five minutes before trying again.
There are four or five newspapers, Jay notices, still wrapped in plastic, stacked neatly inside the door frame, along with gro cery store circulars and an advertisement for something called “cable television,” all neat and tidy, as if someone left them there on purpose—either the occupant of the town house or a neigh bor who knows she’s been away for a while. Jay pokes through the contents of the mailbox, which is overflowing with dozens of envelopes that haven’t been touched. It seems that Elise Linsey hasn’t been here for days.
Jay tries the doorknob. It’s locked.
He tries the bell a third time.
He crosses the front lawn next and kneels in front of one of the windows, behind a low-lying bush of jasmine, making him self less visible from the street. With the glare of the sun behind him, Jay can’t make out much inside the town house beyond a vague sense of disarray. It appears that some of the furniture has been turned upside down. The sight gives him a start. He backs away from the window suddenly, almost losing his balance in the tangle of jasmine at his feet. He walks back to Elise’s front door, not sure of his next move. It’s only when he turns, decid ing finally to head back to his car, that his left foot skids across a piece of paper he didn’t notice before, sticking out of the wel come mat.
The paper is folded in half with Elise’s name scripted across one side, just above Jay’s shoeprint. The note isn’t sealed, nor does it bear a federal postmark, which makes him feel better about what he’s about to do. Looking both ways up and down Oakwood Glen, he scoops up the piece of paper and unfolds it.
The note inside is handwritten, the penmanship flat and simple: I tried you by phone several times.
I’m hoping we can sit down and talk.
—Lon Philips
The paper was peeled off a preprinted notepad.
The words
Jay folds the note in half, returning it to its spot beneath the welcome mat. He turns and stumbles back toward his car. The sun has hiked a few more miles into the sky. The day is mov ing into its worst hours, the midday boil. Jay slides behind the wheel of his car, thinking about the note from Lon Philips. If a reporter is getting this close, Jay thinks, then surely the cops are too. He thinks of the disarray inside the woman’s town house—a possible break-in, yes, but just as likely a sign that police detec tives have been through with a warrant; picking through every inch of the woman’s home. The cops are looking for a .22, he remembers. And somewhere, out of Jay’s control, there’s a .22 with his fingerprints on it. He thinks of how incredibly easy it would be to plant
He’s sweating now, shirt clinging to his back, his legs on fire under the cheap poly blend of his suit. That he’s an innocent man, as he was back then, all those years ago, is no real comfort. He knows cops and prosecutors have a natural talent for bending evidence, twisting the truth this way and that, all in the name of putting
Jay starts his car, keeping the AC as high as he can stand it, then he turns the car around, heading back the way he came, out of Oakwood Estates. He takes Memorial Drive into downtown, run ning through his phone call with Cynthia Maddox the whole way. They found her fingerprints in the car. That’s what she told him.
Fingerprints mean Elise Linsey has a criminal history. An arrest certainly, maybe even a trial. The county keeps a record of every criminal case before a judge, going back a hundred years, on file in a basement warehouse in the Criminal Courts Build ing. The clerks make you fill out an information request form with a case number if you have it, or at least the person’s name, then they feed it into a computer terminal in the back office. A printout tells them the location of every trial transcript, sentenc ing order, or brief ever filed in relation to the case. It’s all public information for those who know it’s there.
The clerk’s office is on the first floor of the building. Unlike the rest of the judicial facility, done up in stately marble and offi cial-looking mahogany and brass, the clerk’s office is a narrow, poorly ventilated room that always smells of paint and copier fluid. It strongly resembles the waiting room of a public clinic, with rows of plastic straight-back chairs and a take-a-number system of operations. There are three Plexiglas windows cut into the wall, behind which sit three women, one of whom—a busty black woman sipping soda out of a Del Taco cup at ten forty- five in the morning—Jay knows to be the office manager. There are only women in this office. They work with the radio on, greet ing cards and family pictures tacked up on the walls. They chat breezily while they type and do paperwork, seemingly enjoy ing themselves, in no real hurry to get through the day. Jay has already been waiting for half an hour, his knee pumping up and down, keeping a nervous beat, one eye always on the door.
When his number is finally called, he walks straight to the middle window. The clerk behind the glass is in her
